statistics of the Hôtel-Dieu at Lyons, that infants suckled by
their mothers have a mortality of only 12 per cent., but if
suckled by strangers, the mortality rises to 33 per cent. It may
be added that, while suckling is essential to the complete
well-being of the child, it is highly desirable for the sake of
the mother's health also. (Some important statistics are
summarized in a paper on "Infantile Mortality" in _British
Medical Journal_, Nov. 2, 1907), while the various aspects of
suckling have been thoroughly discussed by Bollinger, "Ueber
Säuglings-Sterblichkeit und die Erbliche functionelle Atrophie
der menschlichen Milchdrüse" (_Correspondenzblatt Deutschen
Gesellschaft Anthropologie_, Oct., 1899).

It appears that in Sweden, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, it was a punishable offense for a woman to give her baby
the bottle when she was able to suckle it. In recent years Prof.
Anton von Menger, of Vienna, has argued (in his _Burgerliche
Recht und die Besitzlosen Klassen_) that the future generation
has the right to make this claim, and he proposes that every
mother shall be legally bound to suckle her child unless her
inability to do so has been certified by a physician. E.A.
Schroeder (_Das Recht in der Geschlechtlichen Ordnung_, 1893, p.
346) also argued that a mother should be legally bound to suckle
her infant for at least nine months, unless solid grounds could
be shown to the contrary, and this demand, which seems reasonable
and natural, since it is a mother's privilege as well as her duty
to suckle her infant when able to do so, has been insistently
made by others also. It has been supported from the legal side by
Weinberg (_Mutterschutz_, Sept., 1907). In France the Loi Roussel
forbids a woman to act as a wet-nurse until her child is seven